Streaming Most Popular Form of Music Consumption For 18-29 Year Olds, Radio For Everyone Else

A new survey by Morning Consult breaks down how American's consume music in this age of technology and, for most age groups, it still comes down to old technology.

Streaming is dominant for those in the 18 to 29 age group with their top two ways of consuming music being Pandora and Spotify. Radio is third, followed by purchasing their music and other forms:

Pandora - 28%

Spotify - 23%

AM/FM Radio - 14%

Purchased Music - 11%

Apple Music - 7%

Google Play - 5%

iHeartRadio - 4%

Amazon Prime - 4%

Tidal - 1%

Those figures point out a couple of things about the way the charts are currently working and where the industry is going, assuming that 18 to 29 is the group that consumes the most music. First, now that streaming is considered sales at a rate of 1,500 streams to 1 unit, it becomes obvious why artists that appeal to a younger audience (Drake, Rihanna, etc.) can leap frog over older artists who may sell more units but can't compete when the streams are taken into account.

Second, future artists are going to have to contend with much lower payouts for their recorded product. It is obvious that the trend is very quickly moving to a streaming dominated industry and the artist makes nowhere near as much from that technology as they did from the sales of actual product. It signals a major shift in how artists will actually survive in the music world, depending on touring and merchandising and not on their actual recorded works.

Now jump to an older demographic, those 55 to 64. Yes, they do still consume music but in very different ways. Radio is still the king as is actually buying a CD.

AM/FM Radio - 49%

Purchased Music - 18%

Pandora - 13%

Amazon Prime - 4%

Google Play - 3%

Spotify - 2%

iHeart Radio - 2%

Apple Music - 1%

Tidal - 0%

Of course, there is one other thing that is painfully obvious from this survey. It's time to pull the plug on Tidal. It has only made a very small dent in the market after only two years. If it isn't getting numbers by now, it never will.